*Spoilers for the finale of The Beauty follow*
The Beauty bowed out its chaotic run with a guest appearance from Nicola Peltz Beckham, in a role that might need to be seen to be believed.
The Ryan Murphy co-written and produced nine-parter reached a body horror fever pitch with its finale, which included more spine-cracking contortions as beauty hopefuls took the hot jab to transform into new versions of themselves.
One of those who entered into a newer, younger body on the Disney Plus show was Isabella Rossellini’s character Franny, who had maintained a staunch opposition to the injections her billionaire husband Byron (Ashton Kutcher) masterminded.
But all that came crashing down when her callous, MAGA-coded sons injected her against her will. And who said motherhood was a thankless task?
Rossellini’s character then morphed into Peltz Beckham, who woke up outraged to have had the battle scars of her life smoothed out with restored youth.
Understandably, she was disturbed the decision had been taken out of her hands, even as her hubby tried to spin it as a positive, since he had been taking the stuff and defying his real age for some time.
The Disney scene then took a gasp-inducing turn, as Peltz Beckham’s Franny stuck a jagged shard of pottery into her neck, a bit like her rascals had done with the jab. Franny started to bleed out before a panicked Kutcher; it’s as grim as it sounds.
But because this is the show that defies age and all its associated markers, like death, Franny was kept going with life support.
Metro's thoughts on The Beauty
Senior TV Reporter Rebecca Cook’s one-star review urges you proceed at your own peril…
With the advent of supernova drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro, plus the ongoing conversation around cosmetic injectables and Kris Jenner’s facelift, this could have been the perfect moment for a show about the ‘one shot that makes you hot’.
But the result here is shameless claptrap.
The Beauty may have been in the can when the All’s Fair front hit, in which case, perhaps nothing could be learnt to make this much better. Or, putting my tin foil hat on, it’s been created this way on purpose, as a way to hype up the show’s word of mouth with it’s-so-bad-you-have-to-see momentum.
Ryan Murphy, you can do better. And we deserve it.
Post-body morph, Peltz Beckham was decked out in a top of chunky strung-together jewels, in what was a sly nod to Rossellini’s costume in Death Becomes Her (incidentally, that film is a much better commentary on modern beauty standards than this).
In the 1992 horror comedy, Rossellini played a temptress offering an elixir for eternal life to Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn’s characters.
Director Michael Uppendahl said in an interview that he wasn’t sure Rossellini was even aware of the homage, since she isn’t in the scene, but that it had been Murphy’s idea.
‘As soon as I heard it, I thought it was spectacular,’ he told Variety after the finale had aired. ‘Someone recently started making that jewelled top again. It is kind of coming back in fashion, on a very high, rather exclusive level that Franny could afford.’
The Beauty is available to stream on Disney Plus.
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